At the risk of one-downmanship á la Four Yorkshiremen, for the last few weeks I've had two or three children and often one adult on "remote working", usually with at least two of them on video calls (though the schools mandate cameras off, so upload speed isn't a problem) and the only time I've had complaints was when the line dropped. All this on ADSL2+ that syncs at around 8Mbit/s down, 1Mbit/s up.
And I'd pre-empted this issue by installing a 4G modem on my router only to discover two very annoying problems. Firstly, the MVNO I have it with (Smarty - i.e. Three) won't allow my on-site email server to send (not expecting receive as DNS points to the fixed line), and secondly, Teams wouldn't allow a re-connection. Or at least, when the backup was running, clicking "re connect to meeting" in Teams came back with a message along the lines of "you are not authorised to join this meeting".
To be fair, it's the first time the line has dropped during working hours this year, and it was back up within about 15 minutes, but boy did I get it in the ear from those family whose work had been interrupted!
At some point I will upgrade to FTTC so that when three people are all remote-working the rest of us don't have to limit our use of iPlayer or make sure that the computer doesn't suddenly try to download 500MB of updates, but I have been amazed at how few problems 8Mbit/s has actually caused and a 50% hike in the broadband part of my broadband-and-calls package isn't actually terribly appealing.
M.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
